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Independent Artists: Internet Helps Bypass Gatekeepers

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The internet is a sea of opportunities if used optimally, and more so for emerging and independent artists. If you want to scale up and expand your reach, the internet is a great place to help you as an artist to bypass gatekeepers. An emerging culture of music streaming, as opposed to physical sales, has steered this ship in a direction where independent artists can freely carry out their artistic expression on social media platforms to attract an audience. Never before has it been this viable for alternative cultures such as underground music and art to surface and grow without necessarily having to budge for bodies of authority.  This blog post will discuss how you as an independent artist can bypass those gatekeepers. 

Use Facebook and LinkedIn to find Journalists to Write about your Music 

As a matter of interest, magazines and tabloids are in an unrelenting search for new content all the time. All it requires from you is that you make yourself visible to them on social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn. To top it over, owing to the culture of a close-knit community, music journalists and music promoters will often work in conjunction. Not only would journalists write about you, but chances are that they might add you to their recommendation list to promoters. Though you’re busy writing the best music you can, it may be worth finding the time to make yourself heard on these social media platforms.

Follow Promoters on Twitter and Instagram

Promoters spend a lot of time on the internet, start following them TODAY. Start interacting with them, comment on their posts, establish a personal connection. Smart usage of the internet can help you secure gigs. 

Send Newsletters to your Fans and Promoters

Newsletterring is a very effective approach to maintain fan exclusivity and retention. The idea behind this exercise is to establish a very personal rapport with all parties involved, where you as an artist show how much you care for your fans. Imagine the sense of suspense and exclusivity that comes with being part of a secret gig around the corner. This sentiment can be created by advertising your show through newsletters to a selected list of your fans.

Use Online Communities to Spread your Music

Online communities are certainly a very crucial part of building online visibility. One of the ways to spread your music on digital platforms is to share your music with fellow musicians, which always creates a room for opportunity. Collaborating with similar artists is a great way to build your repertoire and Facebook’s communities feature makes this much more lucrative. Here’s a full blog post on building an online community of fans. 

youbloom is a platform that helps you as an artist to grow, sign up here and find out more: https://www.youbloom.com/artist-apply/

Curator At the Core: Become a CityRep with youbloomConnect Today

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youbloomConnect offers a panoply of options for creators, doers, and achievers: a youbloomConnect CityRep is an individual with all those things rolled into one: a pro curator. If your passion for planning and curating live music is contagious enough, youbloomConnect might just be your next dream job! Here are 4 of the most prominent attributes we’ve had in our best CityReps so far, and why you can be one too:

  1. Curator at the Core 

Envisioning your event, setting goals, scraping your resources together and finally making it happen: your forte to create ‘experiences’ for individuals who wish to be part of something they call their own can now escalate rapidly. Curating a show with youbloomConnect gives you the power to pull off great gigs across the globe! The curator in you will operate as an eminent live music promoter in your vicinity to push the envelope for unsigned musicians!

  1. A Deep Passion for Live Music

For a job like this, getting to be around live music at all times is the ultimate icing on the cake. Everyone dreams of a job where they can combine their productivity and skills with what they love the most – needless to say, we’ve got you covered on that front!

  1. Marketing Master

Spreading the word and creating a buzz is key for pushing youbloom events. Your marketing skills can translate into you being an effective influencer in your local scene. While you set yourself up in preparations to promote your gig, experts at youbloomConnect will show you the ropes as well!

  1. Pro Negotiator 

As a CityRep you will be involved in the process of reaching out to vendors, managers, hosts, artists and fans. Your convincing skills to bring these stakeholders on-board with you will now come in handy. Being conscious of the costs and to effectively capitalise on every resource will be your mantra!

 Sign up as a CityRep today: https://www.youbloom.com/cityrep/

Follow the youbloom community on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram 

 

Show Tickets: Live Music Can Be Highly Affordable For Fans

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Live music is conceivably one of the most exhilarating experiences one can ever have. Having said that, show tickets can burn quite a hole in our pockets, and some might even argue that it’ the most expensive activity they indulge in. This is true in most cases, but at a fundamental level, live music can be a highly affordable option for fans. Furthermore, the independence that comes with an emerging live music scene has everything to do with how you as a fan contribute to it, and interestingly, all it takes at times is a pint’s worth! Local music promoters have come a long way and know exactly what it takes to make it all accessible and affordable to their fans.  A recent wave of gigs at unconventional and/or secret locations has been on the rise to create an appetite for live music within their community, and much to our advantage they are ALL easily accessible making show tickets absolutely affordable.  At youbloom, we’re all about paying it forward to our global village aka community! We, therefore, urge you to stay tuned to know what we’re cooking up for you. There’s going to something for everyone!

By that token, if you are an individual craving live music in your vicinity, get on your social media platforms to explore every avenue in order to contribute to this growing trend in more ways than just being present at a show. The possibilities are endless!
Here’s an interesting read on how you as a fan or even an artist can campaign for your local artists!

If you want to get more involved in your local music scene and reach out to like-minded artists and music lovers across the globe, youbloomConnect is the place for you! Go ahead and sign up to know more. 

If you’re a “Fan”, click here 

To sign up as a “CityRep”, click here

How to Promote Your Music on YouTube – And Keep your Subscribers (2018)

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Promoting your Music on YouTube

Promoting your Music on YouTube isn’t exactly revolutionary. In recent years, the content-sharing platform has beefed up its incentives for creatives looking to grow a subscriber-base and monetize their music. For the DIY musician, the challenge is rising above that seemingly infinite noise of YouTube content and its pesky algorithms. Here we’ll outline how to make your channel a hub of unstoppable, watchable content that the algorithm’s just can’t keep at bay. 

Put Your Best-Flick Forward.

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Nick Aslam – youbloomDublin Music Festival 2018

Have your best or newest music playing at the start of the page or readily clickable. A majority of viewers decide whether or not they’re going to subscribe to a channel in the first 30 seconds of scanning the page. If they’ve ended up on your page then that’s already a great start for you. But now you need to hook them. Have your newest release or most popular upload playing automatically as they enter your channel. That, or have a welcome video that immediately makes the page personable between you and the viewer.

Clear Call-To-Action

You don’t want it to be hard for your viewer to find more of what they like. At the start and end of videos, as well as throughout your profile, make your call-to-action easy to see, and simple to click. The Backlink channel with Brian Dean has a really useful tutorial that explain the “In and Outs” of creating an effective call-to-action as well as tips on all aspects of YouTube strategy. A call-to-action can be links to your other social media, website or BandCamp album.  Also, end your videos with explicit calls-to-action for viewers to leave a comment. Anything that will provoke further engagement among viewers is key.

Keep it Consistent

Choosing a day and time of the week to consistently upload content will more likely gain you a consistent fan base. Followers are more reliable if they can rely on you to stick to an upload schedule.

You’ve most likely spent a lot of time developing your band or music to fit a certain style. You want the feelings fans associate with that style to transfer over into your YouTube page. Work on developing your page to mirror your music. This could mean creating a layout with video thumbnails and color schemes that match that of your album artwork. 

No Returns Without Tags

The tags you choose to represent your videos with will be your first line of attack in ranking among the ocean of YouTube videos. You want to cast a wide net but you also want to be casting it in the right place. Tags are the primary source that YouTube algorithm’s use to place your video.

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Peco – youbloomDublin Music Festival 2018

Your first tag should match the keyword you have chosen to represent your video and should also be included in the video title. If the video in question is your “Music Vlog at the Hollywood Bowl,”  than an appropriate first keyword might be “Hollywood Bowl or “Music Vlog.” For your next view tags, use variations of that keyword. Perhaps “Gig Vlog,” “Vlog,” or “Hollywood Music.” For your final few tags, use general terms that encapsulate the big picture of your video: “live music” or “LA music scene.”

Another way to get your tags working for you is by using the same ones as other popular videos that are similar to your’s. Websites like TubeBuddy and vidIQ allow you to quickly check the tags of high ranking videos allowing you to slap on the same tags for a chance to show up beside them in a search.

Keep it Short Lengthy

This isn’t Twitter folks. 140 characters isn’t excessive. In fact, research has shown that writing longer descriptions for your videos actually helps your ranking. 100-200 word descriptions seems to be the sweet spot here. This is because the more specific you are, the more YouTube bots have to work with when sorting you for organic searches. 

By the same logic, longer videos, usually 8-15 minutes long, rank better. Just by making longer content you are quickly increasing the chances that your video will get more watch time. So if you’re wondering how to turn that 3 and a half minute music video you’re premiering into ideal-length content, get creative. Add bonus content to the ends of your music videos; a behind-the-scenes feature or heartfelt message from you and your band to your followers serves two purposes. It gets that run-time up closer to the sweet spot and it humanizes you and your content, giving fans a connection to you and your band that would otherwise be lost in cut-and-dry music video.

Co-Market

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The Burma – youbloomDublin Music Festival 2018

Many YouTubers rely on one another to promote their own channels. Teaming up with other artists, collaborating, or guest appearing in each others’ videos is mutually beneficial when both parties exchange niches of fans and followers. Websites like youbloomConnect make this co-marketing simple by matching you with compatible artists that suit your style and are based nearby. This makes collaboration seamless and if you end up finding a good match, youbloomConnect will even help you to set up gigs with the other artists. Check out our Connect Guide to learn more about everything youbloomConnect can do for artists.

Make this Space a Home

Finally, you want your channel to be more than a glorified playlist; that’s what SoundCloud is for. YouTube is the perfect platform to show your followers the minds behind the music and to establish a personal connection with subscribers. Feeling a relationship with a YouTuber promises a much higher return rate of loyal viewers between uploads. This can’t be done with a music video alone. Create band interviews, behind-the-scenes gig vlogs, or an informational video. And don’t forget to end each video with some specific call out to your viewers: “Leave a comment about your favorite part of that gig, what band we should collaborate with next,” etc.

Stay tuned or subscribe to the weekly youbloom Newsletter for our follow up article on promoting your music on YouTube. In our following post we’ll be getting into the nitty-gritty of perfecting your SEO score and how exactly you can beat the algorithm.

Top 6 Micro Job Sites – For Musicians

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Choosing the Right Micro Job Site

Being an independent artist can be tricky. When the gigs aren’t exactly flowing, one way artists can convert their skills to profit are through micro job sites. While platforms like Fiverr have become a popular hub for freelancers to offer up their skills to patrons, many competing micro job sites are offering unique perks to accrue their own network of buyers and sellers. Here we’ll disentangle the pros and cons of these platforms so you can find the one that’ll suit your needs.

Fiverr

Fiverr being the most well know micro job site platform, it has set the bar for this global marketplace. As its name suggests, a musician can offer up their services for as little as 5 bucks. Fiverr’s platform is clean and user friendly and seems to cater to musicians more with services being broken into categories like: Voice Over, Mixing & Mastering, Singer-Songwriters, Jingles & Drops, and Sound Effects as well as others. The commission Fiverr receives per gig is 20%, meaning they’ll get a dollar of that $5 jingle you wrote. While this rate is somewhat steady among job sites, minimum service rates can vary as well.

 

Fourer

The next logical step if Fiverr is not for you is Fourer. With no lack in discretion, this site is a spin-off from Fiverr and the minimum rate is $4. Like Fiverr, Fourer nabs 20% of each transaction. The catch with this site is that you can only receive your payout through Paypal. Many similar job sites function this way so consider your relationship with Paypal before signing up. Fourerr also provides users the ability to “level up” where points can be gained by selling services. These points can then be exchanged  for purchasing credit  on the platform.  

 

FiverUp

Don’t let its name fool you. FiverUp offers minimum rates of $4 and takes a 20%  commission. You can manage your funds through Paypal or your credit card. In an attempt to differentiate itself from its competitors this micro job site offers a flurry of extra features. For example, FiverUp offers a “bump” function which allows users to pin their service to the site’s front page everyday. Their is also the possibility that if the company finds your service to be unique or especially useful, they will feature it in their blog, maximizing your exposure.

 

SEOClerks

Diverting from the common pun, SEOClerks has carved out its own niche of buyers and sellers priding itself/advertising itself on services as low as $1 and being especially useful to SEO and web development services. If you are an artist looking to beautify your website or expand your brand coverage, purchasing services here may be your best bet, but SEOCLerks allows you to sell the same range of services as the other sites, leaving a category of Music and Audio for musicians to sell their craft as well. They have different user levels which dictate the range of cost you can demand for your services where you may start offering gigs from $5-$125 and at later levels there is no maximum on the price. They also have a “want to buy” and “want to trade” section, where you can ask to have specific gigs done.

 

Gigbucks

While not wholly unique in its design, the platform has garnered good reviews from it users and a reliable following. Like the others, Gigbucks pays out through Paypal or Alertpay/Payza, and also offers credit to one’s Gigbucks account balance. The rate one can charge is $5 – 50 and Gigbucks takes a set 20% cut.

 

Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk)

Finally, there is MTurk. This Amazon-affiliated crowdsourcing website is based in India and has accumulated a wide girth of customers over the years and is known to be a sturdy forefather of the micro job site platform. Any number of Human Intelligence Tasks (HITs) can be requested and those who complete them, Turkers, are paid in Amazon credit. One can also pay the Turker through debit/credit or PayPal. Workers based in India have an added perk of being able to receive payment as a direct deposit in the form of Rupees. The commission rate for MTurk is where things become more complicated with a 20% – 40% fee per HIT depending on a workers number of tasks at had. A worker can be paid as low as $0.01 for a task but usually jobs pay as low as $1.20.

 

Still not sure where to post your services? Take a look at our comparison chart of what each platform has to offer. Hopefully this will clear things up so you can begin posting and get paid!Red Orange Photo Comparison Chart.png

Robert Loustaunau is a content writer for youbloom and is a member of the social media team there. He is an avid music maker and listener. He enjoys the simple things in life: coffee, a good book, and quality time with his lovely girlfriend.